Edge of the Wilderness - By Stephanie Grace Whitson Page 0,14
who are called. And I am calling you to Mankato.
Sighing, Simon stood up. He stared for a few more moments at the cross. Then he made his way down the aisle and out into the foyer. Shrugging into his worn coat he stepped out onto the front stoop and pulled the church door closed behind him and locked it. It had begun to rain. He turned his coat collar up against the light wind and headed up the street, past neat brick homes as far removed from the log cabins he had inhabited over the past few years as the moon above was from the earth. If it stopped raining, he would take the children fishing tomorrow. Perhaps Gen would go along. They could picnic beside St. Anthony Falls.
Simon shoved his hands in his pockets and headed up the street toward the Whitneys’. When he arrived, he paused to look up at the rambling two-story frame house. It was another example of God’s blessing. Samuel and Nina had been sent west from Illinois to help with the relief effort for white refugees from the southwest corner of the state. They agreed to rent the house almost on a whim, simply because it was offered so cheaply they could not resist. But once they were ensconced in the small quarters at the rear of the first floor with their two small children, they began to wonder about the wisdom of taking on such a vast property. God verified their choice by proceeding to fill the rest of the house. Two displaced Dakota Mission teachers, Lizzie Huggins and Belle Stanford, arrived first. Next came Miss Jane Williams with young Rebecca and Timothy Sutton in tow. And, finally, Simon and company.
Simon walked slowly up the steps and opened the door as quietly as possible, pausing in the entryway just long enough to hang up his coat and hat. At the bottom of the soaring staircase he removed his worn-out shoes. He looked around him, thanking God that his children lay safe in warm beds just upstairs. Then he felt ashamed, knowing that at this very moment Dakota children were dying of disease and neglect while their fathers and brothers were held at Camp McClellan. While they were still in Minnesota, the men had engaged in a lively correspondence with their families in Fort Snelling. Dr. Riggs said he once transported two hundred letters back to Fort Snelling in one week. Simon wondered how the two groups would communicate now that they were so far away from each other.
At the doorway to what he had come to think of as “his girls’” room, Simon paused. He turned the doorknob slowly. Careful to stay mostly out in the hall, he peeked around the door and toward where his precious Meg lay asleep, her red curls spilling over her pillow. It had stopped raining. Moonlight poured through the one tall window in the far wall. Perhaps a picnic would be possible, after all.
To his right, baby Hope lay asleep in the crib they had managed to cram between the doorjamb and the corner of the small room. A soft, rhythmic gurgling accompanied her thumb-sucking. Simon smiled to himself and started to back out of the room. But then he allowed himself one look back to where, next to Meg, lay the real reason he did not want to leave St. Anthony.
She had come to Simon and his wife nearly three years ago, the autumn before the uprising. She boasted the flowing dark hair and rich brown skin of her Dakota mother. But Genevieve LaCroix had none of her mother’s placid nature. She had been forced to stay with the Danes by her determined French father and she did not hide her reluctance. Love for her father and loyalty to her dead mother’s wishes made her stay. with Simon and Ellen Dane, made her study and learn, but love and loyalty could not keep the emotions raging inside her from shining in her brilliant blue eyes. Simon smiled to himself, remembering Genevieve’s defiance in the face of what she considered to be his willful ignorance of the Dakota people. You think everything Dakota is bad, she had yelled at him one night long ago. She had been so furious she had stomped her foot as she accused him, You think everything Dakota should be forgotten.
He hadn’t appreciated hearing it one bit. Mostly because he had realized she was right. He had spent ten years among the Dakota